SteamWorld Build is, first and foremost, a dungeon crawler. The city builder elements are simply a means of padding gameplay.
The Station is currently a fully owned subsidiary of Thunderful Publishing. Before joining, they served as an outsourcing firm. They mostly created assets and DLC for the LittleBigPlanet franchise. This includes Sack Boy costume packs themed around games like Dark Souls 3, Tekken 7, and Bioshock Infinite.
Thunderful Publishing is made up of a 2020 merger between Swedish studios Image & Form and Zoink – the former being the original developer of the SteamWorld franchise. As long as Thunderful is helping to guide The Station, things should be in good hands.
SteamWorld Build is the sixth installment of the SteamWorld game series. Its gameplay greatly differs, as the original SteamWorld Defense was a tower defense game on Nintendo DS, and SteamWorld Dig is an action game. SteamWorld Build takes a vastly different approach – combining a city builder and dungeon crawler into a single game.
When setting up a game, there are five biomes: Giddyup Gorge, High Roller Dunes, Grand Gully, Tumbletown, and Fossil Park. These determine map sizes, aesthetics, and some available resource placements. You can also select the difficulty, ranging from casual, where this progresses more slowly, or hard mode, where resources are never refunded.
You also need to choose if both the tutorial and story are activated. These cannot be changed midway through, so the selection is very important. The tutorial explains controls and mechanics, while the story gives narrative content about why you are even doing any of the tasks in SteamWorld Build.
The biomes do not affect the story at all. Every character, event, and motivation will remain the same. Sometime after the conclusion of SteamWorld Dig, steambots settled in and set up various cities around the planet. Miner Jack Clutch’s sprocket and his daughter Astrid discover the Core, a machine that wants to excavate ancient technology and reach space.
Jack gets to work but is constantly under the thumb of the city’s ruler, Gunn-Britt Gildenwire. She seeks a thriving city that will bring in money and power – the salvation and well-being of the citizens are only secondary (if not a concern at all). She sends out her deputy, Clark Piston, to ensure Jack stays in line, using aggressive force if needed.
If the tutorials were turned off in SteamWorld Build, there is almost no guidance on what to do next. You are in a medium-sized region with many buttons and possibilities. Jack would suddenly spiel about a laundry list of topics if they were on. At first, it is simple things like movement and resources, but the whole UI is soon taken over to showcase every minute detail. This may be helpful if you have never played a city builder, but it would have been better to have a more even middle ground.
Steambots in SteamWorld Build can only walk on roads, regardless of whether they are made of dirt, paved, or even metallic. They will refuse to walk on sand or any other form of natural wilderness. They are also unwilling to walk through or between existing lots. This makes it important to lay out all roads with proper space or risk winding up blocking the way to the next planned district.
The first order of business is bringing in workers. You’ll need to attract at least 200 Steambots to get things rolling. This includes creating homes, general stores, and repair shops (essentially robot hospitals). Key building components include lumber, water, and coal. These resources are not finite; as long as you build facilities, they will continue to be produced. Placement is more about speed and efficiency rather than supply and demand.
What quickly becomes clear is that SteamWorld Build is not a city builder stylized after Sim City. You aren’t particularly trying to manage people or improve lives. Instead, it is closer to the Anno series: everything is about resource management, and a well-planned city will take care of itself with near autonomy. This makes almost the entire city portion of the game more of a puzzle that can be solved with almost zero creativity.
What makes things a bit nicer is that the entire city layout can be quickly changed. Since everything is metal-based and run by robots, any building can instantly be moved to another location without a build time or fee. This allows easy adjustment when new buildings or mechanics are introduced.
This might be useful as the placement grid isn’t the most obvious in SteamWorld Build. When buildings intersect with one another or the terrain, crosshatches of the same color will appear. For example, a blue residential zone will show more blue lines on top. A better visual indicator would have been a contrasting color to give more pop. On the inverse problem, many placed buildings have several squares of “empty” desert space, making it easy to look like you need to build a little bit further than you need to.
To also help supplement the economy is the train that comes at set intervals of time. Automatic trades can be set up to gain new items and pay for anything in excess. This can include fiat currency, building goods, luxury items, or even goods needed later in the supply chain. For example, you can pick up gold, tools, and ruby gems early to prepare for when they are needed.
The train can also be used to purchase buffs, typically, which cost a good chunk of cash. These boosts might hasten delivery times, bring in more workers for a lot, or make workers more efficient. Some of these buffs work on the whole town, while the more powerful ones need to be slotted on individual buildings.
After bringing in a few hundred citizens, the Core and Jack will focus on opening up the abandoned mineshaft. This introduces the second major gameplay component: mining and exploration. This area is a full second map accessed by pressing the 2 key; pressing 1 will switch back to the town surface.
The mine and other underground dungeons have rarer materials used for construction. This includes scrap, tools, gold, and pieces to create a rocket and complete Core’s plan of escape from the planet. However, as tiles are excavated, the mine becomes more unstable, possibly collapsing and destroying progress. To avoid this, pillars and walls need to be set up to prevent a cave-in.
The mine workforce is a completely different set of characters, each of whom has their unique quarters that occupy space in the mine. Miners clear out basic supplies like dirt and rubble; Prospectors look for more valuable materials to send to the city; Mechanics heal other bots and repair structures; while Guards fight enemies that show up.
Parts of the underground are infested with enemy hives. These will either directly attack Steambots or unleash debuffs that hamper their performance. Guards are a direct means of stopping the problem at its source. In addition, various turrets and alarms can be built to defend an area. This turns SteamWorld Build into a similar experience as the original SteamWorld Defense.
These two components of city building and dungeon crawling can be quickly toggled between without any additional load screens. However, they don’t feel like they are one cohesive game. While you send materials up to the surface, once automation hits, there becomes little reason to go back to the surface. These result in SteamWorld Build being almost 90% an action game, with city building tacked on top for flavor.
One of the biggest emphases that this is primarily a dungeon crawler is the save system. Each campaign uses a single save slot that auto-updates periodically. This leaves lasting choices, like in action RPGs like Elden Ring or Lords of the Fallen. This seems out of place for a city builder, which typically prides itself on allowing player freedom.
Steamworld Build features full voice acting but is not at all timed correctly with the subtitles or dialogue boxes. There are no pauses in the text, with words appearing and moving on before characters have even delivered their lines. This is immensely distracting and almost an incentive to turn the story off completely. It is hard to tell if this is a bug, oversight, or made better sense in native Swedish.
Steamworld Build has reasonable, average length load times when first starting up. It is impressive that it is seamless to switch between map times with no slowdown or bugs. However, outright crashing is still possible. This tends to happen when first opening a map or exiting back to the main menu. SteamWorld Build is a great sequel for those who liked the previous games in the series.
But, the addition of a town component doesn’t mesh well. Even fans of games like Anno or IXION will find the resource planning rather shallow and forgettable after a point. But those seeking to delve into the underground, explore, and fight will be pleased. Just be aware that you will need to pop back to the surface every once in a while to complete objectives.
